


LDR: Bad Finite Query (Kabla)

by TIMM (bfq)



Series: The BFQ [3]
Category: Beyond the Aquila Rift - Alastair Reynolds (Short Story), LOVE DEATH + ROBOTS (Cartoon)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-08
Updated: 2019-11-22
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:48:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21524731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bfq/pseuds/TIMM
Summary: There are some things you can't teach. There are some things you can't learn. There are some things you just have to remember.
Series: The BFQ [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1551364
Kudos: 1





	1. Kabla 1

_When you're alone, it's sometimes easier to talk to yourself aloud._  
  
Kabla shut her eyes. It didn't make much difference, the darkness didn't go away. It was still there, curtaining her off from whatever else was out there, lurking. She was still feeling the lurch of the chair disappearing from her grasp, and the floor she was standing on was taking far too long to smack her in the face.  
  
 _I'm... not falling?_  
  
She reached out with her senses. No air buffering her face, no wind tossing her about, no turbulence... no floor...  
  
Kabla opened her eyes again. There was still nothing to see.  
  
 _Why did I think I was falling? Because the chair was there and I was leaning on it, and suddenly it was gone again. I would have been off-balance, I would have fallen._  
  
She blinked her eyes a few times, not that it changed her view. She couldn't see herself blinking, only feel it. And she didn't actually feel like she was falling, only that she expected to be falling. She closed her eyes again.  
  
 _Okay, so stop thinking about falling. Replace it with... oh, I dunno, flying._  
  
She opened her eyes. It was so dark that she couldn't even see her nose in front of her face, she was pretty sure it was still there, but wasn't sure. And she couldn't seem to feel herself either. She had hands still, pretty sure of that too, and thought she would feel them at the end of her arms...  
  
 _This won't do. I need a frame of reference. Okay, forest, trees, bright sunny day._  
  
Still darkness.  
  
 _Maybe that's too hard. My shipboard cabin then._  
  
Still darkness, but she sensed something waiting, just behind the darkness. Kabla stopped trying to imagine the whole thing in one solid picture, but instead painted it in her mind.  
  
The bed there, the hinges broken where it's supposed to fold back into the wall, converted into a shelf. A couple of books, actual paper books, my coveralls where I left them after stripping to climb into my hammock, strung between two corners, once bright pink but now faded and stained. The walls mottled with periodically leaking pipes for water and waste and air. The ladder to my door to the hall...  
  
And she found it fading into focus around her.  
  
And there was a knocking at her door.  
  
"Who is it?"  
  
"Lin."  
  
"Lin? Linzamin? What is this?"  
  
"I come in?"  
  
"Of course."  
  
Lin descended the ladder with surprising grace, almost as if she had more limbs than she was letting on, and looked around the space. "Would you like job?"  
  
"What kind of a job?"  
  
"Everybody fall. They fall until they cry help. Not you, you create this. Retter needs help. One man and me can't save enough. Thirty percent too small. With you, I think we save more."  
  
"What do you need me to do?"  
  
"This, more."


	2. Kabla 2

She sat and pondered. When the world is your canvas, what should you paint?

Kabla sat in the darkness, alone and quiet. She knew she was thinking too hard, but it was too difficult to stop. When the emptiness grew heavy on her shoulders, she pulled up her cabin again, and climbed into her comforting hammock, one leg dangling over the side, rocking back and forth.

In a moment of inspiration, she hopped down, climbed the ladder to the hatch, and started painting the rest of her ship. The other crew cabins, the bridge with all its blinkenlights and the lockers containing blankets and supplies... then back the other way, to the mess, and then the engine room, where things always seemed to make more sense. She had another hammock here too, though the Captain hated having it strung up above the spinning heart, so she kept it bundled up and hooked on one of the wall beams.

She reached for the pulse of the ship, yearned to feel the strumming of its energy, but she couldn't bring it to life. She slowed the spin, brought it to a halt, and continued onward.

She brought the empty cargo space in a single twist of thought. Her memories populated it unbidden, a muscle she never thought she had remembering how to ride the bike. She waved her hand, and knew without seeing it there would be a medical bay and passenger cabins back along the tail... She descended the catwalks without a thought, standing, pausing, before the closed bay doors, and caught her breath.

Kabla didn't know what lay beyond, and feared it would be more darkness than she would be able to paint. She felt the cloying darkness squeezing her ship... until a shaft of warm sunlight pierced the viewport on the bay doors.

She threw up her hand over her eyes in surprise, and at a gentle knocking on the outside, pounded her palm against the control panel.

The doors trudged open, and she was met by a breath of fresh air, liberally sauteed in exhaust and manure. It smelled like home.

Lin stood before her on recently dewed grass, smiling. "You don't need to make whole world, darling. I do heavy lifting. You just paint details."

"I don't know how."

"Like dreaming. You just remember how to dream. Like cows," she gestured behind her, and the empty field populated with two dozen heads of the same beast. "Close eyes. Remember... Now open."

Kabla looked out among the herd again, and they were all individuals once more.

"Good. I write, you 'proofread', yes?"

Kabla nodded.

"You keep ship. Is good work. I not help at all. Now, sleep, dream. I go write." She turned to go.

"Wait... why do you talk like that, Lin?"

"Reminds you I am not you. Not like you. I am apart. Different."

"So you could talk just like us?"

Lin deepened her tone. "I am the voice of every being you meet who is only a memories. I speak like you when I am you, when I participate in your memories." "When I am above, outside, when I am not you, I speak not you. I am not you. Close door. Sleep sound. Dream well."


End file.
